Electronic devices, such as laptops, notebooks, netbooks, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and mobile phones, for example, increasingly tend to include a variety of wireless communication capabilities. The wireless communication systems used by these devices are expanding into the higher frequency ranges of the communication spectrum, such as, for example, the millimeter wave region and, in particular, the unlicensed 5-7 GHz wide spectral band at 60 GHz. This expansion to higher frequencies is driven in part by the requirement for increased data rate communications used by applications such as high definition video, for example, that require multi-gigabit data rates. Propagation losses and attenuation tend to increase at these higher frequencies, however, and it can become difficult to implement antenna systems on the device platform in a manner that provides the desired spatial coverage, for example, omni-directional or nearly omni-directional coverage while maintaining high directional antenna gain.
Existing approaches to solve this problem generally rely on the deployment of increased numbers of active antenna modules on many sides of the device to increase spatial coverage. This approach, however, increases cost and power consumption and takes up additional space on the device platform.
Although the following Detailed Description will proceed with reference being made to illustrative embodiments, many alternatives, modifications, and variations thereof will be apparent to those skilled in the art.